


Midsummer

by haillenarte



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Alternate Character Interpretation, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Mild Gore, Prostitution, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-12
Updated: 2018-06-07
Packaged: 2018-10-17 22:07:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10603224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haillenarte/pseuds/haillenarte
Summary: Written April 30, 2015 — April 10, 2017, set after patch 3.2. Corentiaux, Francel, and the ways that men wonder if they were ever loved.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "I would sooner die than become a thrall of the dragons." — Lord Francel de Haillenarte
> 
> "May the wyrms' minions fly low, bank sharp and die screaming." — Ser Corentiaux the Colder

illustration by [ihletek](http://ihletek.tumblr.com/).

  
  
  
  
They call him Corentiaux the Colder, and it bothers him because he spends a great deal of time convincing everyone that he _isn't._  
  
Corentiaux likes to think he is anything _but_ cold. He has mastered the art of manufacturing pretenses. He is polite; he is polished; he greets Ishgardians and adventurers alike in a voice warm and promising as morning sunrise. He practices his smile over dusty mirrors and murky puddles of half-melted snow.  
  
Corentiaux tries. He has to. Perfection is the only thing he has left.  
  
Still, his fellow knights never do stop calling him _the Colder,_ and it's not until Saint Daniffen's feastday — his sixth at Camp Dragonhead — that he finally thinks to ask why.  
  
"Because of your eyes, Corentiaux," a slender, pretty knight answers over the ensuing laughter. "Such a lovely shade of green they are. They're enough to give a woman the chills."  
  
Some confident response slides off his lips — something about how he prefers to keep women _warm_ , and everyone laughs a second time. It isn't true, but the truth isn't important. Corentiaux isn't particularly attracted to anyone, at least not in Camp Dragonhead — but it's best to make others think he might be, in case he can use it as leverage later.  
  
The matter of his title goes unaddressed for quite some time. Corentiaux doesn't get an objective answer until the older knights have sobered up a bit, and one particularly grizzly veteran finally looks up from his mug of mead to blink rheumy eyes at him. "It's nothin' to do with your eyes, lad," he grunts. "We call you Cold for your huntin' demeanor. You've a mean look on you when you cull Dravanians — ruthless as the Fury herself, you are."  
  
Corentiaux smiles, and thanks the knight for the compliment.  
  
Killing is his favorite method of honoring the dead.  
  
He excuses himself from the table not a few minutes later, citing typical justifications: a midnight walk; clearing his thoughts; a taste for sobriety. He declines the company of the knight he's been flirting with — another night, perhaps, thank you — he clears his plate, and after every fork and knife and delicate ego is set in its proper place, Corentiaux leaves the building.  
  
Outside, the air is crisp and deliciously cold, and once his lungs have filled with it, he feels a bracing chill run down his spine.  
  
In reality, he simply needs to be alone. People interfere with his thoughts; they infect him with the white-static need to scheme and manipulate. Corentiaux never simply _talks_ to his fellow knights — he flatters, he cajoles. He flirts as naturally and compulsively as he breathes. It isn't as though he's turning a profit off his silver tongue — and anyway, Camp Dragonhead will answer to _him_ before it answers to any Lord Emmanellain who would play at his half-brother's seat — but seduction is just so irresistibly _easy_. People are so simple. And Corentiaux plays with hearts the same way other men play with cards.  
  
He keeps his eyes on the clouds as he walks, but he lowers his gaze as he walks through the aetheryte underpass. His breath breaks on the winter air: white smoke against falling snow.  
  
Only after he steps out from beneath the archway does Corentiaux notice that there is someone standing on the parapets — Lord Francel de Haillenarte, eyes turned heavensward, staring up into the grey sky.  
  
Corentiaux is not the sort of knight who considers comforting widows one of his duties, and friendless lordlings are similar enough to give pause — but he has pretenses to keep and a role to play, and he cannot leave the scene without at least saying _something_. "Lord Francel," he calls, loud enough to catch the man's attention. "Is there aught with which I can assist you?"  
  
The young lord turns. His blond hair gleams in the glow of the aetheryte. The edges of his cloak flutter in the wind. "No," Francel says. "Not anymore." And then he turns, and walks the long way toward the other side of the wall, where no one will bother him — where no one would want to.  
  
  
  
  
  
In the gender-neutral haubergeon, Corentiaux is sometimes mistaken for a woman. The problem, he figures, is first, that he is attractive, and second, that there aren't many women on the frontlines — so desperate men fashion their own comforts, and imagine a shapely bosom in the curve of his muscular chest.  
  
He doesn't mind. Not exactly. He's learned by now that his pretty face has its uses. He's good with a sword, of course — he has to be — but where other knights cut life-and-death bargains with steel, Corentiaux barters with his smile. He remembers: _half-forgotten lessons gleaned from seeing my mother on the arm of a different man each night_ —  
  
Corentiaux pushes his thoughts aside.  
  
He is standing on the wall, keeping the early watch, when another knight calls his attention to something unimportant: a new shield, freshly painted. The unicorn's wreath shines glorious scarlet in the morning sunlight. Corentiaux smiles and tries not to imagine the metal warped and broken. He says something innocuous, then laughs and shakes his head — one lock of golden hair catches sensually on his lip, and he leaves it there.  
  
Ser Theobalin's voice startles them all into formation.  
  
It's only Francel coming over the horizon, with a bouquet of lilies in his arms, but the point is made — they cannot afford to be so relaxed. Corentiaux watches Francel make the slow journey up Haldrath's March. Ironically, the situation is reversed from when he last saw the young lord: this time, he is on the parapets, and Francel is below.  
  
There are sentries at the bottom of the gate who could address House Haillenarte's youngest, but Ser Theobalin takes the initiative instead. "Lord Francel," the old man calls from the walltop. He eschews the standard interrogation; they all know why Francel is here and where he is going. "You may pass."  
  
"Yes," Francel says, and nothing more.  
  
Undoubtedly, the young lord would leave it at that if he had the choice — but Theobalin does not allow him that luxury. "You know he would not want this," the veteran knight says, after a pause just long enough that Francel starts walking again. "This mourning, this _pining_ — it is not what he would want from you."  
  
Francel stops dead in his tracks. "I suppose," he says, flatly.  
  
"He would have wanted you to be happy," Theobalin insists.  
  
"I suppose," Francel repeats, in the same toneless voice, and even from the walltop, Corentiaux does not miss the way the lord's jaw tenses.  
  
Theobalin looks as if he wants to continue the conversation, but Corentiaux steps in before the old man can say anything else. "Ser Theobalin," he calls, his voice gentle but still loud enough that the young lord can hear. "Lord Francel is a busy man."  
  
The admonishment is thinly veiled. Theobalin relents.  
  
For a moment, Francel lingers at the bottom of the gate, under the weight of every soldier's gaze — but when the prolonged silence makes it clear that Theobalin will not hold him any longer, he continues walking toward Providence Point.  
  
Corentiaux decides he won't let it end there. For no better reason than that he knows he can get away with it — because he has _seniority_ , and no one, not even Theobalin, will dare to reprimand him — he leaves his post. He descends the nearest watchtower. He crosses the courtyard, walking toward the underpass where Francel has paused to rearrange his flowers.  
  
Once he's there, Corentiaux brushes his hair out of his face. "I must apologize on Ser Theobalin's behalf," he begins, choosing his words carefully. He is all too aware that the underpass is a terrible place to talk: the knights patrolling the aetheryte can hear them up top. "He means well."  
  
Francel does not look up at Corentiaux's approach. Instead, he pulls at his lilies, trying to straighten out a wrinkled petal with his thumb. "He heeds your counsel," he observes quietly.  
  
"Ser Theobalin is like a father to me," is Corentiaux's reply, which is a polite way of saying that Theobalin's fatherly guidance is twenty years too late to make a whit of difference.  
  
Francel doesn't ask him to elaborate. "I hate that phrase," he murmurs, after a pause. His voice is unnaturally even. "He would not have wanted this.' The men and women of Skyfire Locks say that often. He would not have wanted this."  
  
The bluntness of Francel's language surprises Corentiaux, but he keeps his tone carefully neutral, devoid of judgments. "You disagree?"  
  
Francel is quiet for a long time. His fingers clench tight around his bouquet of lilies. "When I am gone, do not let them speak of what I would have wanted," he says at last, as if that answers the question, and Corentiaux wonders what Francel expects to hear in response.  
  
He doesn't press further. Francel continues walking. And only after the young lord disappears beyond the north gates does it occur to Corentiaux that he once said the same thing, years and years ago, when there were people that he cared about besides himself.  
  
  
  
  
  
Six years at Camp Dragonhead, and Corentiaux has begun to think of upward mobility again. It's not that he's discontent — his colleagues are good knights and even better countrymen — but he has himself to look after, and more to life than another slain commander and a garrison full of memories.  
  
At first, he considers applying for admittance to the Temple Knights; later, he contemplates swearing fealty to a different High House. He has contacts at the Observatorium. House Durendaire would welcome him with open arms.  
  
He weighs his options like a felon at a crossroads.  
  
Ambition tastes like salt at the back of his teeth.  
  
His peers are infinitely more selfless. Nobody seems worried about _themselves_. Instead, they fret over Lord Francel, and his perpetual unhappiness. Understandable, perhaps — it's hard to just ignore Francel when he cuts through camp every day with all the solemn grace of a funeral procession — but it's getting old. Dinner conversation has become predictable: it cycles between Lord Francel's ill humor, and Lord Francel's health, and Lord Francel's well-being, _in that order._  
  
Yaelle broods over Francel to anyone that will listen. "It has been too long since last I saw the young lord smile," she keeps sighing to herself. "I understand he is still in mourning, but..."  
  
"His laughter would lighten our burdens," Corentiaux agrees, without even looking up from the day's reports.  
  
Truthfully, he can't bring himself to care — or, more accurately, he can't see what there is to care about. Francel is not the lord to whom he swore fealty. Francel is not even a particularly good leader. Francel doesn't really _matter_ , in the grand scheme of things, and he certainly doesn't matter to Corentiaux.  
  
The local lordling and his world of hurts was always someone else's problem.  
  
In the kitchens, Medguistl fusses. "They're not feeding him right over there, that's his problem," she complains, flouncing over flours and spices like some particularly angry jellyfish. "You've been to his house, haven't you? Over at Skyfire Locks? It's ever so dreary, and he has to cook for himself, and can you _imagine_ trying to bake in that awful oven — just, oh, I have just the thing for Lord Francel. He needs a cup of warm tea and a pile of sweets. Does he still love pudding, do you think?"  
  
"I've never asked," Corentiaux replies, placidly.  
  
Corentiaux knows better. Sorrow is a more surefire poison than starvation. What ails the lordling is nothing that can be fixed with food. At this rate, Francel won't last another year — Corentiaux knows it by the way the young lord's trips to Providence Point get longer and longer by a few minutes each day.  
  
One day, he just won't come back at all.  
  
_Oh well_ , Corentiaux thinks. If Francel is determined to die, that's nobody's business but his own.  
  
He can't find an opportunity to charm Medguistl to give him an extra helping of breakfast when she's all fired up over the Haillenarte boy, so Corentiaux waits until the food is served in the mess hall to wheedle his way into someone else's serving of eggs. He crafts the illusion of beauty all throughout the clatter of breakfast: he smiles, he makes others smile, and he eases his comrades into the challenges of a new day.  
  
His fellow knights love him not only for his grace but for his willingness to do tasks that they would rather avoid. Later, in the evening, Eugennoix brings a dead wolf back to camp, and claims that the threat of an impending snowstorm stayed his hand from pelting the beast in the field — so Corentiaux takes on the job, skinning the wolf in the north courtyard with the snow falling all around him.  
  
Technically, the job is beneath him — and as acting commander, he could simply assign a squire to the task — but Corentiaux uses the opportunity to showcase his solidarity with the knights on sentry duty. They tease him for his perseverance. "Working diligently, Corentiaux?" one watchman calls from his post.  
  
Corentiaux smiles and twirls his bloodied knife between his fingers. "Not so diligently as you, my friend," he calls back.  
  
Still, as a matter of precaution, Corentiaux looks up at the thickening snowfall, and reminds himself that he should finish before the snow gets any worse. He sweeps a delicate crown of snow from his hair. Without looking, he reaches for the pair of scissors he left lying on the ground — but his knuckles brush across a leather shoe where he expects to find empty air.  
  
Corentiaux looks up, and finds Francel staring back at him.  
  
The young lord watches Corentiaux for another moment, and then crouches beside him in the snow.  
  
Francel's shoes are incredibly clean. Corentiaux's gloves are stained with blood. The knight feels a familiar resentment rise up from his chest to his throat — the commoner's distrust of the privileged — but he wills himself to keep a straight face. He is the first to break the silence. "As I asked you some days past — is there aught with which I can assist you?" Corentiaux asks, as gently as possible.  
  
Francel stares at the skinned wolf with indifferent eyes. "I was merely thinking," he murmurs quietly, "that gods taught you gentility, and beasts taught you to hunt."  
  
Corentiaux only blinks.  
  
"He would have liked you," Francel continues, almost to himself. "A pretty smile and deft hands. A radiance I never had."  
  
Jealousy, Corentiaux has learned, is best parried with flirtation. The knight raises a brow. "There are better ways to compliment a man, Lord Francel," he replies, in a voice rich and smooth as silk. "Perhaps you might allow me to demonstrate."  
  
Francel is silent.  
  
Figures.  
  
As Corentiaux works, Francel watches. Eugennoix did not kill the wolf with its pelt in mind, so not all of its fur is intact — but what Corentiaux has salvaged will make fine armor-lining. Once the skins are finished, Corentiaux sets them aside, and begins carving meat off the bones. Wolves are too inherently tough for standard culinary preparation — but the softer meat between the ribs is palatable enough once cured and smoked, and Corentiaux knows very well that the taste of dried jerky can be a godsend on long patrols.  
  
He hacks and carves with a butcher's precision. Muscle and sinew give way to the sharp edge of his knife.  
  
A movement from Francel makes Corentiaux look up. He watches Francel's lips move, hears the soft chime of the young lord's voice — but, for some reason, the sounds don't form words in his mind.  
  
Corentiaux leans closer. He uses a clean finger to pull his hair back to his neck; he tucks his hair behind his ear. The effect is alluring, or so he has heard from at least a half-dozen different lovestruck squires. "Years of managing our cannons and artillery have left my hearing somewhat impaired," he explains. "Might I trouble you to speak again?"  
  
The young lord seems to hesitate at Corentiaux's proffered ear, but he complies.  
  
Yet the words that Francel murmurs are not at all what the knight expects. "I never really liked you," the young lord breathes, as casually as anything else: a brazen insult disguised as a lover's sweet nothing.  
  
Corentiaux pulls back, brows raised. "Why is that?" he asks, genuinely curious.  
  
Francel's head is tipped back in a silent challenge. "I trust men without enemies even less than men without friends."  
  
The knight smiles thinly in response.  
  
Fair enough, he figures. If he were smart, he wouldn't trust himself either.  
  
But even so, Francel doesn't move. He watches Corentiaux with an unwavering resignation — unyielding, unflinching, all half-lidded eyes. In the flickering firelight from a nearby torch, the young lord looks sometimes hungry, sometimes weary; sometimes innocent, and sometimes bestial.  
  
A fine layer of snow rests on Francel's shoulders, but he makes no moves to brush it off. "I have so often been hunted," he says. Then — after Corentiaux stops to consider what that means — "I should be more like you."  
  
Corentiaux turns his knife over and over in his hands; he looks at his reflection in its surface. He should not ask the question that rises to his lips. "You want to be more like the man you never liked?"  
  
"No," is Francel's cryptic reply. His lips seem to curl in the lamplight. "But this has nothing to do with what I _want_."  
  
  
  
  
  
Hunting with a noble lord, Corentiaux knows, is a matter of deference, not of instruction. He is not going to teach Francel how to aim a bow or treat pelts or build fires; he is not going to be any sort of _mentor_ to the lordling. He intends merely to flatter and lie, as he always does — for in Corentiaux's understanding of the world, knights do not criticize nobles, unless of course they are noble knights.  
  
He doesn't ask Francel to bring his own bow. Instead, he takes Francel to the Camp Dragonhead armory, and lets him take his pick of the bows meant for the archer-sentries. He half-expects the man to choose the newest bow, or perhaps the most elegant — but instead, Francel chooses a weathered yew bow with a sturdy frame well-suited to his height. The young lord takes an obvious liking to the bow as soon as it is in his hands: he runs his fingers over the riser as if testing the skin of a lover, and then nods to himself.  
  
No one has used it in a while. The yew bow is Corentiaux's personal favorite. It is the bow that the other knights never touch; it is the bow that the other knights have learned to leave for him.  
  
_Not that one,_ Corentiaux thinks, but he closes the door to the weapon-storage, and says nothing about it.  
  
At first, he expects Francel to be helpless, really and truly helpless, incapable of so much as nocking an arrow to a bow — but, unexpectedly, the lordling takes the lead for most of their excursion. Corentiaux lets him. Francel seems to know what he is doing. He is just not particularly _good_ or _bad_ at anything,  _which,_ Corentiaux thinks, _is almost worse than being helpless._  
  
"Sixteen years, and it was not enough," the young lord says, by way of conversation, when at last their hunting has taken them to the far southern outskirts of Dragonhead and the lights of the Observatorium glow in the distance.  
  
It is apparently something Corentiaux is supposed to have a response for. He gropes for polite repartee and comes up empty-handed. "Sixteen years," he repeats blandly, "is a long time for one friendship."  
  
"Yes," Francel says. "And yet it was not enough."  
  
"No amount of time is ever enough with a beloved friend," Corentiaux replies, cautiously.  
  
"That isn't what I meant," Francel says, "by _enough_."  
  
Corentiaux waits for an explanation and does not receive one.  
  
_Enough._  
  
So: Francel is frustrating. Fine. He's dealt with worse. Corentiaux has run the gamut of spoiled lordlings. An infuriatingly reticent young lord is far more tolerable than the other sort — the kind that talks too much about himself, with nary a single weighty thought to be found in his head. Nobles are just _like_ that. Francel's ambiguities are tolerable in comparison.  
  
_This is almost laughable_ , Corentiaux thinks. A boy who wants to be unhappy, and a man who doesn't even try to stop him.  
  
Then again, Francel's hardly a boy. He's twenty-two — twenty-two years, two-and-twenty summers. Corentiaux is twelve years the lord's senior, by his own count — but only four years by everyone else's, because Corentiaux knows better than to say he's thirty-four if he can get away with twenty-six.  
  
He doesn't have time to think about his age for long. Without exchanging a single word, both knight and lord slow their steps at the sight of a karakul on the horizon.  
  
"Take careful aim, milord," Corentiaux advises — and Francel ignores him, but that's just the way of things.  
  
Francel moves as if through water. His target — the karakul — continues foraging in the snow, serenely unaware of its impending demise. Corentiaux holds his breath. The young lord has surprisingly good form. He squares his shoulders and fixes his sight on the karakul in the snow.  
  
Fingers to the jawline. Release.  
  
He misses.  
  
No, he _doesn't_ miss — the arrow strikes a foreleg where a chest had been only moments prior — but Corentiaux is surprised; he figured the lordling's arrow would hit snow. Wine-red blood spills almost imperceptible against black wool. The beast squeals and tries to run.  
  
Most novice hunters panic at their first unclean kill. Francel does not, perhaps because this is not the first time he has had to correct his mistakes. Calmly, the young lord nocks a second arrow and trains his sight on the fleeing karakul. Pull. Release.  
  
A second strike, and the beast keels over, dead.  
  
The snowfields seem unforgivably quiet. "Excellent marksmanship, milord," Corentiaux offers, after a pause.  
  
Francel is less lenient towards himself. "No. I should not have missed the first shot."  
  
"Well," the knight replies, placatingly, "not everything can go right on the first try."  
  
"Nor on the second," Francel says, "or the third, or the fourth."  
  
Well.  
  
Corentiaux can't imagine what he's supposed to do about that.  
  
After a beast is killed, it must be dressed, but field dressing is not a task for nobles, even when they fancy themselves sportsmen. Corentiaux takes over. The meat of a wild karakul is tougher than that of one raised by a Coerthan sheep-rancher, but Corentiaux is undeterred — lean mutton is a damn sight better than leathery wolf, or baritine croc. The knights of Whitebrim Front are known to eat eft and mudpuppy meat on occasion; Corentiaux likes to think he has higher standards for himself, so he keeps Camp Dragonhead better-stocked.  
  
His hunting-knife is wonderfully sharp. One clean slice through the belly, and Corentiaux has the whole of the beast laid out before him. The heat of the carcass warms his palms even through his gloves, reminding him that he really can't delay in removing the inedible bits and pieces. Intestines and organs are considered delicacies in most southern countries, or so he's heard, but Corentiaux prefers to avoid the risk of encountering maggots and undigested particulates in his food, and leaves it all for the wolves instead.  
  
_How nostalgic_ , he thinks to himself. He knows an open carcass better than he knows his own body. He slices through connective tissue; he knifes past harder tendons. He pulls the beast's windpipe out with his hands alone, and then casts it aside with the other organs.  
  
When he extracts the karakul's rib cage, Francel _flinches_ , and Corentiaux feels cold amusement tug at the corner of his lips.  
  
His laughter sounds like the dry wheezing of a wolf, even to himself. "Never thought about whence your dinner comes, my lord?"  
  
Francel is not Corentiaux's lord, not technically, but he doesn't address the issue. He lowers his gaze to his shoes. "You enjoy this," he says, in a strained voice that is almost accusatory.  
  
"Only because you don't seem to," Corentiaux replies.  
  
For a moment the knight wonders if he's misstepped, but Francel's face displays no taken offense. "Best not say that where others might hear," he says, after a pause, and turns away.  
  
Corentiaux returns to his work.  
  
When all is said and done, the knight lays the rack of lamb on a rock to dry, and throws his bloodied gloves on top of the mess. Chilly Coerthan air nips at his bare hands; his fingers burn with stinging cold. He lets the frost sink into his core.  
  
Lord Francel has found himself a seat some paces away. He pulls his limbs in toward himself as Corentiaux approaches. His expression is hard for Corentiaux to pin down. "Are you going to chastise me because I did not watch you through to the end?" he asks softly.  
  
"No," Corentiaux says, and is surprised to find himself honest.  
  
And then, on a whim, for some reason, on some impulse — because seeing Francel's downturned gaze somehow _infuriates_ Corentiaux — he reaches out, grabs the noble by the wrist, and pulls him to his feet.  
  
"Do you think yourself weak over something so small?" he asks, very quietly. The young lord's skin feels cool against his blood-warmed hands. "Do you know what it is like to be truly weak?"  
  
Francel opens his mouth. Corentiaux doesn't wait for a response.  
  
"I once lived in the Brume with a mother who could not tell me who my father was on account of how many patrons she had," the knight continues, absently rolling his thumb over the inside of Francel's wrist. "Once she had saved enough of her ill-gotten coin, she moved to eastern Coerthas, thinking she would never have to beg or steal or whore herself ever again. She lived on the outskirts of a seigniory where she should have had plenty to eat — but the local baron forbade the commoners from hunting on his grounds, because it ruined his sport. The birds, the boars — they were all _his_ to hunt, you see. So she poached his pheasants in the dead of night and she bedded his men to buy their silence. So she was still a whore — only they paid her in meals, and not coin. And you nobles would ride out with your hounds and your falcons, your bows and your muskets, so that boys like you could learn to kill."  
  
Somehow, Francel does not pull his gaze away from Corentiaux's. His wrist tenses in the knight's grip. "Where were you in all this?"  
  
Corentiaux smiles tautly. "I was there," he says, and nothing more.  
  
When he lets go of Francel, the young lord pulls his hand in towards his chest, rubbing his wrist as though he might erase the sensation of Corentiaux's warmth still lingering there. For a long while, Francel is silent. Corentiaux wonders if he's going to _apologize_. That would be truly embarrassing.  
  
But an apology never leaves Francel's lips. "You are not wrong," the lordling says at last. "Every summer, my father would take me hunting. I remember it well. Clearwater Lake. The hunting-parties. The noble men, all milling about." He takes a shaky breath. "But you are wrong about one thing — they were not there to teach their sons to kill. They were there for fealty and finance and falsehood. Their children were there to learn how adults lie to one another."  
  
Corentiaux sets his jaw to prevent himself from responding. He watches Francel shiver in the snow.  
  
"I hated those summers," the young lord continues. "The sunlight was so strong it would fair blaze upon your skin. The heat would warm you to your bones. I hated the riding. I hated the birds. But still," he says, eyes flicking away toward the darkness. "But still..."  
  
"But still?"  
  
Francel's breath is visible on the breeze. His eyelashes flutter against his cheek. "My father always said that a hunting-hawk is a creature that kills for you. That you cannot love a hunting-hawk, because it cannot love you." His fingers tug idly at the string of his bow. "I wish I had listened to him," he says, finally.  
  
Corentiaux doesn't know what to say to that, so he looks up at the darkening sky. He dons his mask: he pretends to be courtly and courteous and cultured. "It seems about that time," he says, after a pause. "Let us journey homeward, my lord. People will wonder where we are."  
  
"People will wonder where _you_ are," Francel replies, but when Corentiaux turns toward the man to deliver an exasperated retort, he finds the young lord smiling faintly.  
  
Corentiaux keeps his thoughts to himself.  
  
  
  
  
  
When at last he reports for dinner, fresh from his outing with the lord of House Haillenarte, he finds his fellow knights in the midst of lively repartee. They cheer and applaud his arrival, as friends sometimes do; they welcome him to the table, raucously, every tongue loosened by drink. "Corentiaux!" one knight calls, already pouring him a cup of ale. "The coxswain of our merry crew!"  
  
Someone calls Corentiaux a filthy whoreson, and he laughs. He pretends to be pure and wholesome. Corentiaux's life story is very different in the sacred space of the dining-hall, where all his colleagues can hear him. His mother was an honest woman, thank you, and his father was a knight, if anybody asks.  
  
No one ever does.  
_  
_ The problem with being well-liked, Corentiaux decides, is that everyone is entirely too invested in his personal affairs. His colleagues press him for details about his love life; they ask him about the pretty knight from several nights prior. He smiles through tasteful non-denials. Corentiaux evades questions about his relationship with Francel the way lascivious nobles avoid pregnant maidservants — skillfully, whilst anticipating imminent disaster.  
  
Despite his best efforts, he fails to elude Ser Eugennoix's persistent grousing. "I must say, I do not envy your position, Corentiaux," Eugennoix drawls, when an unfortunate lull in the conversation draws his attention to Corentiaux's corner of the table. "As _fond_ as I am of Lord Francel, I cannot imagine that you enjoy waiting on a noble from another House, extolling his every missed shot."  
  
Corentiaux smiles politely. "He is more talented than you might believe," he replies, sounding rather more sincere than he wants to be. "You saw his kill today; you know that he is capable."  
  
Eugennoix pauses in his sip of ale, furrowing his brows at Corentiaux over the rim of his mug. "I thought you slew that karakul, and returned it in his name," he says, incredulously.  
  
When Corentiaux shakes his head, Eugennoix frowns. "Well, he shoots like you," the man relents, after a pause, and Corentiaux wonders if he should be offended.  
  
  
  
At his post, Corentiaux thinks about lies. For years he has known them as ugly necessities, employed them often, to soften blows and decorate his darker thoughts. He has a mind well-suited to keeping all his falsehoods in order; he is so fluent in the give and take of social currencies that he can lie often and he can lie well.  
  
Corentiaux likes lies. They remind him that no one can be trusted.  
  
So he cannot explain, even to himself, why he did not simply _lie_ to Francel when they were on the southern borders of Dragonhead. He could have said nothing. He should have. He had no real reason to be so honest — no real reason to tell Francel the _truth_.  
  
_But there is no truth_ , he reminds himself. _There are only individual truths. There is only what each man knows.  
  
_ He has developed some unspoken agreement with the young lord: they hunt karakul from morning 'til nightfall, and then do not speak for another two days. Repeat. Repeat. Corentiaux forgets how they made this arrangement. It seems as natural now as breathing, save that breathing does not leave him with a pile of untouched missives on his desk at the end of the day.  
  
They are walking the forests south of Skyfire Locks, between the Observatorium and the gates of Griffin Crossing, when Francel breaks their mutual silence. "They talk of peace in Ishgard these days," he says, stepping gingerly over branches and boulders.  
  
The comment seems neither here nor there, but Corentiaux cannot help a bitter laugh. "And yet we taste naught of it."  
  
"The war will continue," the young lord predicts, with predictable cynicism. "It will simply be given a different name."  
  
"Is that not the way of things?" Corentiaux agrees.  
  
Undoubtedly, Francel has some joyless response readied — but he loses his footing in the snow, stumbling on the root of a tree. Corentiaux has caught the young lord by the elbow before he can stop himself. He immediately regrets his good reflexes.  
  
The knight lets go as though he's been burned. "You are unwell, my lord," he says, carefully toneless.  
  
Francel shakes his head, evidently unbothered by Corentiaux's reaction. He holds his own elbow loosely. "I did not rest — I could not sleep."  
  
"Unpleasant dreams?"  
  
Francel seems to hesitate. He looks at Corentiaux from beneath his eyelashes, and then looks away. "From time to time," the young lord murmurs, "I dream of dragons."  
  
Corentiaux knows what Francel means by the hollow timbre of his voice. The knight has had similar dreams. "As do we all," he says, gently.  
  
"Other nights," Francel continues, "I dream of the woodcutter's shack. Of the hard floor and the taste of filth and the smell of sawdust." He leans heavily against the tree; his blond hair feathers out against the bark. "But he never comes to save me," he says, quietly. "No one ever does."  
  
The young lord's words stir memories that Corentiaux did not know he had. He has heard this story before — the aristocrat's boy, his silver-haired savior. The common men that died for their glory. "You must needs learn to save yourself," is his response, and he hates that it is genuine.  
  
He expects Francel to be annoyed, but the young lord only smiles. "In those days I only wanted everyone to be happy," he says, his eyes too-gentle. "I hate the man that I've become."  
  
If Francel were mortally injured, Corentiaux thinks, that would be a fine point for him to die. But he is not — he is not even scratched, and when Haillenarte's youngest shifts his weight back onto his feet, Corentiaux steps back to give him room to walk.  
  
He has learned to walk the tightrope of the young lord's sanity. Francel continues to speak in paradoxical riddles, but Corentiaux is beginning to understand his language. What Francel _says_ is not important. It is what he leaves unsaid that matters. All the same, the knight feels as though he is navigating mist, wandering a world where words have no meaning.  
  
_No, not meaning_ , Corentiaux thinks, _but power._  
  
_This has always been about powerlessness._  
  
"Mark," Francel announces.  
  
Corentiaux scans the horizon and spots the karakul from several malms away. He hands Francel an arrow from the quiver entirely on reflex.  
  
As Francel takes aim, Corentiaux wonders what goes through his mind. Perhaps he thinks of his long-dead brother. Perhaps he thinks of the work that awaits him at Skyfire Locks. Perhaps he thinks of all the different methods of slaughter, and the pleasure of watching a living creature bleed out and grind to a slow halt — perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.  
  
The thought that Francel might be just like him is surprisingly seductive.  
  
Pull. Release.  
  
Francel's arrow finds the beast's neck perfectly. Corentiaux feels his lips twitch upward into a smile, but he smooths his expression over before the young lord sees.  
  
Francel relaxes. His shoulders find their usual sloping slant. "I wonder when he started thinking of me as an obligation," the noble says, very casually, as if Corentiaux is not about to clean up his mess.  
  
Corentiaux cannot provide an answer, and so he does not. He kneels by the dead karakul and submits a different topic of conversation. "I hear that primals are given form by the prayers of their devout," he says. "That they are shaped by the beliefs of those who call them."  
  
"What are you getting at?" Francel asks, in the tired voice of a man anticipating a waste of his time.  
  
"Well," Corentiaux says, "they seem to me the same as men."  
  
Francel's expression does not tell Corentiaux whether he agrees or disagrees. He tugs at a lock of blond hair behind his ears, then changes the topic again. "Why do you do this, Corentiaux?"  
  
The knight feigns misunderstanding. He lowers his eyes. "What do you mean?"  
  
"What I mean to say" — Francel begins, then breaks off, fretting with the string of his bow. It takes him a moment to recollect himself. "Why are you here with me? Right now? As a knight of House Fortemps, you need not escort or attend to me. And we both know you do not enjoy this."  
  
Ah. Of course.  
  
Corentiaux takes a moment to coat his hands in blood. He has been anticipating this question, and yet what actually comes out of his mouth is nothing that he rehearsed. "I hated the way everyone else was treating you," he says, after a long silence. "As if you were broken, and they would somehow fix you with their words, or their compassion, or their pure intentions. They do not understand — there is nothing to be fixed. When good men die, there are no right words to say. There are only... distractions."  
  
He can feel Francel staring at the back of his neck. "Are you content, then, to be my distraction?"  
  
The knight doesn't look up. He tears savagely through bone. "This is but one of a great many roles I have learned to play."  
  
Francel is quiet for a moment. Corentiaux hears him shift in the snow. "And all the players their parts, and every man his mask," the young lord muses. "From time to time, I wonder what you look like without yours."  
  
Corentiaux considers the question. "Worse," he says, finally, and it is by some miracle that Francel actually chuckles.  
  
  
  
  
  
When they are done, Skyfire Locks claims Francel's karakul. Corentiaux is indifferent. He supposes it's only fair. In his mind, he drafts a vague proposal to have Camp Dragonhead and Skyfire Locks simply share food supplies; the Fortemps knights get more than enough, and besides, their garrisons are so deeply enmeshed that Corentiaux suspects he could send a platoon of Haillenarte knights out on patrol and have his orders followed to the letter.  
  
Such a proposal would no doubt find its way to Francel's desk.  
  
Corentiaux considers it, and then sets it aside for another time.  
  
He is locking Francel's bow ( _his_ bow) in the weapon-storage when he hears the sound of cracking snow behind him. Not footsteps, but the sound of a man shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Corentiaux expects one of his fellow knights — Eugennoix, perhaps, or Theobalin, come to speak with him about work. He turns.  
  
Ser Portelaine of House Durendaire is there.  
  
The man does not explain how long he has been watching.  
  
Corentiaux feigns supreme unconcern. "Hail, Ser Portelaine." He inclines his head in polite acknowledgement. "What business have you in our Camp Dragonhead?"  
  
Portelaine is keen-eyed: he follows the movement of Corentiaux's arm as it reaches up to sweep gold hair out of his face. "I had a query regarding our last joint training exercise with which I could not trust a messenger. Worry not — Yaelle has taken care of it," the Observatorium knight-captain answers evenly. But then his brown eyes flick over Corentiaux's features with something more than passing curiosity. "So long as I am here, however... I have heard it whispered, Ser Corentiaux, that your shield may soon bear the bell of House Durendaire, and not the unicorn of House Fortemps. I would hear whether those rumors are true."  
  
Ah.  
  
Well.  
  
"Your rumors have some root in truth," the younger knight answers cautiously. "I will confess to making some cautious inquiries. House Haillenarte, too, has seemed a tempting prospect of late."  
  
"Has it, now?" Portelaine's forehead wrinkles alongside his brow when it furrows. "Yes, I heard some rumors regarding _that_ , as well."  
  
"Have you, now?" Corentiaux cannot shake the vague sense that he is being put on the defensive. "It would seem there are a great many rumors about me of which I was not aware."  
  
"Perhaps." The red-haired knight shifts his weight. His gaze is uncomfortably intense. "I should warn you that all temptations are temporary. Men grow weary of all things."  
  
Corentiaux has no idea what Portelaine is trying to get at. He wonders if he is being lectured, or worse, that he and Portelaine are having two entirely different conversations. "I will keep that in mind," he says, a bit stiffly. He turns — and then, for a sense of finality, adds, "Good day, Ser Portelaine."  
  
  
  
  
  
It's late one afternoon — when work comes so slowly that Corentiaux performs a routine check of his equipment merely to pass the time — that Hourlinet storms into the central office, looking distinctly furious. The conjurer is wearing the Fortemps haubergeon instead of his customary yellow robe; he throws himself into the closest chair with a heavy rattling of chainmail.  
  
"Unbelievers!" Hourlinet grouses, slamming his wand onto the map table, and pinching the bridge of his nose in some fruitless effort to alleviate his exhaustion. "I am sick and tired of dealing with their prejudices, Corentiaux. If they had their way, they would raze Ishgard to the ground and kill all save the Lord Commander and a few others to be used as bedwarmers. Think that some crass jest? No, some Miqo'te woman _told_ me so, just now, word for word, and I promise you, she was _not_ in her cups. She was injured, and bleeding, and I was about to begin her _treatment_!"  
  
Corentiaux is in the middle of inspecting his vambraces. There is a dent in one metal plate that he doesn't remember acquiring. He turns it over in his hands, then lays it to rest by Hourlinet's wand. "Yes, I've heard much the same from other adventurers," Corentiaux replies, distracted — and then he realizes too late that he sounds apathetic, that he's supposed to _care_. He feigns lighthearted indifference. "I pay it no mind. But what did you do, Hourlinet? Did you physick her?"  
  
Hourlinet sinks into his chair. "Aye, I healed the damned minx," the conjurer grumbles to himself, sitting cross-legged and cross-armed in his seat by the map table. " _He_ would have never permitted me to turn her away, and I cannot very well abandon his legacy now, can I? But I tell you this, Corentiaux — I was sorely tempted to do so. I would have _enjoyed_ turning her away."  
  
Yaelle is ready to provide comfort. She tugs the conjurer's hair loose from its bun; she runs her bare fingers through the auburn waves, scratching gently at his scalp. Corentiaux fixes his gaze firmly on the door, intent on giving his fellows some privacy. "Consider it from her perspective," she chides, not unkindly. "You know how disparaging some of our fellows can be. I always try to be patient with adventurers — it cannot be easy, when others treat them like heathen swine."  
  
Corentiaux stages textbook sympathy for both parties. "To hear them tell it, all in Coerthas are of frosty temperament," he quips, if only because it is the most neutral thing he can think to say.  
  
"But to say that we Ishgardians have no value? That we deserve to die? No respect for the lives of the men and women that live here, and all because not all of us appreciate her ilk coming into Ishgard for work!" For all his sour words, Hourlinet's bad temper is nevertheless tamed by Yaelle's ministrations; he lowers his voice. "And why is the Lord Commander the exception? What has he that I don't?"  
  
_A lot of things_ is the honest answer, but Corentiaux knows better than to say that. He pulls his gloves onto his fingers. He buckles his wrist-straps. The leather is cool against his skin.  
  
"There's nothing for it, Hourlinet," he says. "People only matter when they have money and power."  
  
A heady silence falls over the room, and suddenly, Corentiaux thinks of his epithet: _the Colder._  
  
Yaelle is the first to move. Her hands leave Hourlinet's hair. She walks over to rearrange the small objects that yet remain on the knight-captain's desk. "Incidentally, Corentiaux," she says, in a tone that implies she'd like to change the topic at hand, "the early watch is yours, tomorrow." She must notice some perturbed expression on his face, because she asks, "Is that a problem?"  
  
"No, no." He waves her concerns away with his gloved hand. "I merely — I promised Lord Francel I would attend him tomorrow morning. You know of his newfound passion for hunting."  
  
"Oh, I _see_ ," Yaelle replies, with an inexplicable smirk and all the smug insight of a witness to first-degree murder. "Very well, then. I can take your shift."  
  
Corentiaux isn't sure if he's supposed to be grateful. When the promised morning comes and he leaves his barracks for the south gate where Francel is waiting, Yaelle waves from the walltop. _Too conspicuous._ Corentiaux almost cringes. He's learned by now that Francel doesn't like to be reminded that Corentiaux has other people in his life.  
  
Fortunately, Francel doesn't seem to notice Yaelle's hand in the air. "Fair morning," is all the noble says in quiet greeting — and then he takes his longbow, and doesn't say another godsdamned word.  
  
They pass their first few minutes in relative silence, Corentiaux and Francel, as if both find their voices muted by the falling snow. At length Corentiaux settles on a topic of conversation. "Yaelle seems to have misunderstood something," he says, very casually, while the young lord tries and fails to locate karakul tracks in the snowdrifts.  
  
If Francel knows or cares about Yaelle at all, he doesn't show it. "And what has she misunderstood?"  
  
"She thinks," Corentiaux elaborates, "that we are — friends."  
  
Francel stops dead in his movements. "We are _not_ ," he says, in a voice so accusatory that the knight is almost offended.  
  
"I am glad we are of the same mind," Corentiaux replies, very politely, but Francel only glances over him, and doesn't say anything more.  
  
Corentiaux lets the silence stretch on for another two minutes. They continue to walk down Haldrath's March. When Francel stops and turns to look up the road toward the Steel Vigil — or at least where the Steel Vigil would be if it were visible — the knight sees an opening and seizes it. "I lost a brother when the Vigils fell," Corentiaux murmurs, with just enough vulnerability that it sounds like a confession.  
  
Something like wavering sympathy seems to show on Francel's face. "Trueborn?"  
  
"A friend," he clarifies.   
  
Francel's sympathy freezes over. His expression is as impenetrable as a glacier; his response is icy but barely voiced. "A real friend, or one of your many and mores?"  
  
Corentiaux smiles thinly. "He was a dragoon," he replies, explaining nothing. "I liked him more than most people — as I like you."  
  
"I thought we agreed that we are not friends."  
  
"We are not."  
  
Francel is quiet. In the end, his response is tersely worded and vaguely familiar. "Best not say that where others might hear," he says, and then quickens his pace.  
  
For all his prickliness, Francel's kindnesses are stifling. The young lord is painfully considerate: he always remembers to stand to Corentiaux's right — by his _good ear —_ but the truth is that he doesn't have to. Corentiaux cannot possibly tell Francel that the bit about his hearing was all a ruse.   
  
The knight tucks his hair behind his left ear, and then wonders what guilt is supposed to feel like.  
  
He hates being treated well.  
  
It's poor planning and poor fortune that a fierce blizzard catches them in the middle of their hunting session, but a bit of poor judgment is to blame, too — much as Corentiaux fumbles for excuses, he cannot explain to himself why he failed to notice the darkening skies. Francel, for his part, cannot be expected to notice _anything_ , though it would not surprise Corentiaux if the young lord has seen the storm approaching all this time and simply said nothing about it.  
  
The sanctuary that Corentiaux takes Francel to is a hidden cave at the base of the mountain that gives Dragonhead its name. It is one of few well-kept communal secrets — only Camp Dragonhead knights know of it, and only the _senior_ knights, at that. Then again, Corentiaux reflects, the secrecy is rather pointless: the cave consists of only one chamber — hardly anything worth keeping from outsiders.  
  
The knight takes a moment to let his eyes adjust to the darkness. He plays at being contrite. "I apologize, my lord," he says, as he tries and fails to brush snow out of the links in his chainmail. "I should have seen the coming storm."  
  
"I suppose," Francel says, but offers no forgiveness.  
  
The young lord withdraws to the back of the cave. Then he rests his bow against the cavern wall, and does not so much as look at Corentiaux.  
  
The blizzard howls. Its winds carry through the cavern, chilling Corentiaux even through his heavy haubergeon. If Francel were anyone else, Corentiaux would suggest more _unorthodox_ ways of keeping warm — but he knows better than to try with House Haillenarte's youngest. He follows Francel to the back of the cave.  
  
The Dragonhead knights keep lumber and tinder in a dry corner of the cavern, for emergencies — and this _isn't_ an emergency, not really, but for the sake of the young lord's comfort, Corentiaux nudges some twigs into a loose pile. No proper Ishgardian knight would ever venture into snowy Coerthas without a flint-box; Corentiaux has not neglected his own, and pulls it off the belt of his haubergeon as he kicks a wind-breaking log into place. He crouches by the pile of wood. Sparks. Fire. Flame.  
  
The fire is too bright, too orange. Too many of the things that Corentiaux hates. When it has steadied, he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. "Come warm yourself by the fire, my lord," he announces calmly.  
  
Francel's eyes flick toward the fire, and then away. He hesitates, but ultimately draws closer, settling into place at the edge of the firelight. Corentiaux takes his seat a few paces away. The young lord offers no thanks, but Corentiaux wasn't expecting any, anyway.  
  
There is a cluster of snowflakes clinging to Francel's hair. Corentiaux watches it slowly melt into moisture, and then into nothingness, into air.  
  
Outside, the wind whistles and the snow whirls, enclosing the knight and the lord in a world where only they exist.  
  
When at last he speaks, Francel's voice sounds hoarse, as though it has gotten caught in his throat. "When did you last beseech the Fury for guidance, Corentiaux?" he asks. After a pause, he shifts the direction of the question. "How often do you pray?"  
  
Corentiaux smiles like a wolf with a bloodied mouth. "Priests used to ask my mother that question," he replies, and it does not surprise him that Francel simply closes his eyes and lets the subject drop.  
  
They are silent for a few moments longer.  
  
When Francel exhales, his breath eclipses his lashes. His voice echoes faintly in the cavern. "Sometimes I think the Steel Vigil is more beautiful in ruin than it ever was before the flames."  
  
Their conversations always require Corentiaux to think several moves ahead. He throws another log into the fire. "Is that not true of all things?"  
  
Francel looks away, towards the all-encompassing whiteness of the sky outside. He does not move for a long time. Corentiaux follows his every non-movement, the nothing rise-and-fall of his chest. _Like watching stillness,_ he thinks. Francel is always so remarkably still. _A man dead before he was ever alive._  
  
Finally, Francel murmurs: "This would all be so much easier if he had died because of me."  
  
It is the closest he has ever come to a confession.  
  
Corentiaux is quiet.   
  
_What a terrible thing to say,_ he thinks. _What a beautiful and terrible thing to say.  
  
_ They are beyond judgment and morality. They are beyond the eyes of gods and men.  
  
Corentiaux reaches for the hunting-knife at his waist. He slips it out of his belt-loop. The mythril inlaid in its leather scabbard catches the light. "Suppose I took his place?" he asks, with no humor in his smile. "I could cut my throat for you. Right now — any time at all."  
  
It wouldn't help. It wouldn't fix anything. They both know this — but Francel closes his eyes and folds his hands in his lap. "Cut mine first, and you can follow after."  
  
Corentiaux unsheathes the knife.  
  
It gleams, beautiful and menacing, in the firelight. Corentiaux's hunting-knife has been more loyal to him than he has ever been to anyone else. He knows the edge is sharp and clean and well-serviced. He tests it gingerly against his bare palm, with quiet and serene dignity —  
  
— and then he brings it up to Francel's neck in one quick movement.  
  
Francel doesn't move.  
  
Corentiaux touches the metal against Francel's skin, just below his jaw, but still, the young lord doesn't move. He presses the edge into Francel's soft flesh, into the pulse fluttering gently against his knuckles, and still, the young lord does not move. Corentiaux draws blood. It runs crimson down his hand.  
  
Francel's eyelids flutter open at the warmth trickling down his neck, but he understands — _they_ understand — that the knight will go no further.  
  
Corentiaux pulls his knife away, and then uses his thumb to clean Francel's broken skin.   
  
Francel watches Corentiaux wipe away his blood with something bordering impassivity. "Only a jest," he murmurs — even though they are not the sort of men to do anything in jest. "All in good fun."  
  
A few drops of smeared blood yet linger on Corentiaux's fingers. He uses them to paint his lips red — then, smiling, he licks the blood away.  
  
Francel's eyes flick over the motion, but he stays still.  
  
"You leave yourself so open to betrayal," Corentiaux whispers, through the taste of steel. Then he draws back, and listens — to the fire, to the wind, and his memories of days long past.   
  
  
  
  
  
The memory of Francel and the blizzard and the knife in the cave haunts Corentiaux through the coming weeks. He keeps getting distracted during briefings; he keeps getting lost in reports. He keeps thinking of how _easy_ it had been — how he had just _pressed_ the edge of his blade against Francel's neck, and it had just _given, just enough to bleed, with no resistance, red as wine —_  
  
Again.  
  
Corentiaux pushes his thoughts aside.  
  
He is at his desk in the corner of the main office, trying and failing to will Lord Drillemont's sloppy handwriting into focus, when Yaelle suddenly walks by and drops some parchment on top of the material he is trying to read. "For you," she says, mysteriously. She turns around and walks back to her usual post by the map table. "Lord Francel must needs read that within the next bell."  
  
Corentiaux picks the letter up, curious. He skims it quickly; the missive is of an urgent financial nature, but the contents are nothing particularly damning. "Why not send a squire?"  
  
"I thought you might like to deliver it yourself," his colleague says, without meeting his gaze.  
  
"I see Lord Francel enough as it is," Corentiaux replies.  
  
"Then send a squire," Yaelle counters.  
  
Right.  
  
Corentiaux can't argue with that.  
  
He pulls his gauntlets on and buckles the wrist-straps tightly as he leaves the building. The day is uncommonly cold; no one in Camp Dragonhead would hassle him if he coaxed a chocobo out of the stables to hasten his journey, but Corentiaux chooses to walk, all the same. He has grown used to the gentle slope of Haldrath's March. The lights of Francel's house shine dimly beneath the overcast skies.  
  
When he knocks on the door, no one comes to answer it.  
  
He hesitates a moment, and then lets himself inside.  
  
It occurs to Corentiaux that he has never been in Francel's home before. It seems less a home and more some icebox-storage. Crates and weaponry line the walls, as if the young lord relinquished his personal space to the anti-Dravanian cause long ago. None of the chairs seem especially comfortable. There is too much food in the house for one man — Corentiaux blames some overprotective housekeeper, someone like Medguistl, who thinks that all problems can be solved over dinner.  
  
Francel's bed is still warm to the touch.  
  
Corentiaux puts his vambraces back on, and then pretends he was never there.  
  
He wonders vaguely where the young lord has gone, why the Haillenarte knights are not present. The center table is cleared; the shelves hold nothing of importance. He opens Francel's bedside cabinet. He rationalizes his behavior. He is here to deliver a missive. There must be something in the house that will explain its occupant's absence.  
  
There is an untidy stack of parchment tucked in the back corner of Francel's cabinet. Corentiaux preserves the shape of the pile as he pulls it out, planning to return it in exactly the same position — but then he catches sight of the text on the first page, and suddenly, everything clicks into place.  
  
He is holding Francel's private letters — clearly never sent and never read, but also never _intended_ to be sent or read. Francel's personal handwriting is haphazard, and ignores sentence case and punctuation almost entirely; it is neat and tidy one moment, and then lapses into incomprehensible scrawling. _  
  
there are more things in life than love but if it wasnt love then it wasnt anything — doubt i that the stars are fire? he never gave me reason to believe it — there is nothing i have touched that was ever truly mine — they won didnt they and i lost i lost i —_  
  
Corentiaux traces the blotted line where the recipient's name would be, and draws his own conclusions.  
  
The groan of the door creaking open sounds like a death knell.  
  
Corentiaux does not even try to hide the evidence of his crime. Francel appears in the doorway looking weary and world-worn. His eyes light on Corentiaux — Corentiaux with the cabinet ajar and the papers in his hand — and the young lord's expression lapses into cold hostility.  
  
"Have you had your fun?" he asks  
  
"I would not use that word," the knight answers, cautiously.  
  
Francel lingers in the doorway. "Please leave," is all he says.  
  
Corentiaux stands his ground. "They won," he reads aloud. There is a question in the intonation of his voice.  
  
Francel pauses for a moment. "They won," he answers, flatly. "First they took death from me. Then they took him. And when that was not enough, they claimed even vengeance from my trembling hands."  
  
Then, and only then, does Corentiaux understand that even emptied coffers and a dead brother and all the protections of blue blood could not save Francel from wanting something he could not have.  
  
The knight holds his distance. His throat aches with a vague longing he can't quite name. “I am sorry.”  
  
“And for what are you apologizing?”  
  
“He should have known.”  
  
Francel's words are sharp and final. “It was not his responsibility to know.”  
  
"He should have _known_ , Francel."  
  
"I have only myself to thank for this."  
  
“If it had been me,” Corentiaux says, and doesn’t finish.  
  
Francel is silent.  
  
Slowly, Corentiaux takes up the letters. He closes the cabinet. A draft in the house makes the papers flutter weakly in his arms, like broken birds clinging desperately to life. He walks the short distance to the fireplace.  
  
"I am going to burn these letters," he announces, calmly, with his eyes fixed on the stone wall.  
  
Francel doesn't move.  
  
"I am going to burn them," he continues, "so that they will burden you no longer."  
  
Francel doesn't move.  
  
"I did what I could," Francel murmurs. "And it was not enough." He exhales sharply. "It was never enough."  
  
Corentiaux stares at the papers in his hands for a long time. He wonders if this is the right decision. The right choice. _Their paths untaken, and vows unbroken, and thoughts unspoken. Their mistakes and all their memories. The thousand thousand pieces of a broken heart, and all the facets of a man in mourning, and_ — and only after he has memorized the curve of every letter and the weight in each drop of wet ink does he throw everything into the fire.  
  
He watches the paper blacken and crumble; he watches it through to the end. When only ash is left, he turns his back to the fire, and pretends not to notice when Francel brings gloved hands to his face.  
  
"I gave up years ago," Francel says, past a sound that might be a laugh or a sob or something worse. "I told myself there was nothing I could do, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times — and after a long time, it wouldn't even hurt when I looked at him."  
  
  
  
  
  
Corentiaux does not sleep well that night.  
  
He leaves his bed early to perform an unannounced, supervisory patrol of Camp Dragonhead that leaves the newer sentries hastily inspecting their belt-buckles and the older sentries wholly unconcerned. In truth, Corentiaux is in no mood to reprimand anybody for disheveled armor, but he enjoys the squirming of the squires all the same. They remind him that he can exert control over _something_ in his life.  
  
His patrol is interrupted by Francel, coming up Haldrath's March, regular as the bells. At first, Corentiaux tries to ignore him. It is not their appointed day to hunt, and besides, their last meeting left a bad taste in his mouth. What the young lord does should be none of his concern.  
  
Francel does not acknowledge him as they cross paths.  
  
Somehow, that makes everything worse.  
  
All these weeks of hunting, and still he can't stop Francel from dying.  
  
Francel is some distance away when Corentiaux suddenly changes his mind and runs to catch up with him. He falls easily into place beside the young noble. "Let me accompany you," he says, bluntly. He stops just short of saying _my lord_. Not here; not at Camp Dragonhead.  
  
Francel half-lowers his eyes, as is his habit. He holds his bouquet closer to his chest. "If that is your wish," he replies.  
  
They have walked through the north gate together before, but something about this walk unsettles Corentiaux. The ruin of the Steel Vigil looms ominously over them as they walk the path. The knight fishes for memories of Ser Chlodebaimt but finds none. His sword feels odd at his waist; it weighs heavily on his thigh as he walks.  
  
Francel, for his part, walks with solemn dignity. He holds his head high, all grace and purpose, and he does not lower his gaze again until they reach the monument stone.  
  
Corentiaux wonders if he is allowed to speak. He tests the theory. "I still find it hard to believe that he is truly dead," he says, in a tone that is not entirely sincere.   
  
"Do you?" Francel bends at the waist. He takes up the old offering and replaces it with his fresh bouquet. "The boy I knew died a long time ago."  
  
Corentiaux doesn't respond. There are no right words for Francel. There are no wrong words, either, which means that nothing the knight says will ever truly matter.  
  
_Love,_ Corentiaux murmurs to himself. _Love. Like letting someone else see every single ugly part of you._  
  
Francel trails one gloved finger across the top of the stone. "There are men in their graves with more life than I," he whispers, barely audible above the howling gale. "And others who would smile at my death for no better reason than that I am nobly born."  
  
"My lord," Corentiaux says.  
  
"You were like that once."  
  
"No," Corentiaux says, firmly, and that is the end of it.  
  
Francel kneels. He bows his head. He stands by the monument for so long that Corentiaux begins to suspect that the young lord might very well be able to communicate with the dead. That perhaps all this time they have been dead, that perhaps they both died long ago and crossed into a world where everything is exactly the same, where nothing ever changes...  
  
And then Corentiaux looks up, and sees the wyvern in the sky well before it strikes.  
  
His voice comes out not as a shout but as a strangled hiss, as if silence might save them from dragonfire now. "My lord, we must away!"  
  
When Francel doesn't respond, Corentiaux rushes forward, takes him by the wrist — but Francel doesn't move. He just _looks_ at the knight, still kneeling, his dark blue eyes too-gentle — he smiles like he'll never be hurt again in his life, and Corentiaux realizes with sudden and overwhelming clarity that _this is what he wants, this is what he's been waiting for, this is why he spent all that time at Providence Point praying_ —  
  
The wyvern plunges.  
  
It descends so rapidly that Corentiaux is almost thrown off his feet. The dragon stops just short of the two Elezen, as if to taunt them, to grant them some sort of honorable mercy. It beats its wings and screeches. One of Nidhogg's brood, no doubt — Corentiaux knows, he would know best,  _wars do not end merely because powerful men desire peace._ _Perhaps,_ he thinks, _it knows who Francel is._ Perhaps it has come seeking vengeance. Perhaps it wishes only to claim yet another son of Haillenarte over some long-held grudge or some slight from many years past. It doesn't matter.  
  
Corentiaux has little empathy for men. He has even less empathy for dragons. _  
_  
He sees the ominous flicker of flame before it even comes. Corentiaux feels no fear. He knows it is harmless, it cannot reach him, it will do nothing but illuminate the wet gleam of his tongue as it darts out to wet his lips. He measures the time in heartbeats: one, two. He knows it is his time to strike when the temperature drops and cold air rushes over his lips. Corentiaux draws his blade. Steel flashes once, twice — deeply, savagely. Blood flies through the air in a satisfying arc. He wonders what sort of expression he is wearing. _The Colder,_ he reminds himself. _The Colder._    
  
The wyvern shrieks in pain and Corentiaux feels joy sing in his very bones.  
  
And the beast knows, it knows that the battle is lost, in one desperate bid it turns round to snap its fangs not at Corentiaux but at Francel, it knows that this is its last chance to kill the defenseless before the defender and Corentiaux sees his opening, he seizes it, his sword straight through its back, through thin ribs and open wounds until the tip of his blade is almost pressed against Francel's neck, dripping blood onto his collar, blood on his chest and his shoulders, caught in flaxen hair, rolling down the curve of one flushed cheek —  
  
Corentiaux remembers himself.  
  
Adrenaline leaves his body like a callous lover.  
  
Francel is covered in dragon's blood. It drips from his hair and face all down the front of his bliaud, staining it a rich crimson. Corentiaux thinks of the cave and the fire and the taste of iron on his lips. He pulls his blade out of the wyvern's broken body, and kicks the corpse aside.  
  
"Are you unharmed?" he asks.  
  
Francel shakes his head. He runs his hands through his hair; his gloves come away red.  
  
"A creature that kills for you," Francel murmurs, very gently, and for once, Corentiaux knows exactly what he means.  
  
  
  
  
  
They make for an elegant pair when they arrive at the northern gates of Camp Dragonhead, the knight untarnished and his bloodstained lord. Alarum seizes the sentries before Corentiaux gets the chance to explain that Francel is unharmed. They call for a chirurgeon and an inquisitor; the chirurgeon is dismissed, but the inquisitor is not.  
  
Inquisitor Brigie is a practical sort, and she knows better than to spare any expense for the cleansing ritual of House Haillenarte's youngest son. She readies holy waters, blessed salts. Corentiaux half-expects Francel to cower in embarrassment at being unclothed before a woman, but the young lord submits to Brigie's administrations with impressive indifference.  
  
It's funny. Stripped of his clothing, Francel could be anyone, any knight or noble or prostitute's son — but even so, Corentiaux still can't imagine what Francel would be like if he were happy.  
  
Corentiaux lets Brigie take his haubergeon, too, when she asks for it. His chainmail is only stained with light blood-spatter, but the inquisitors have new policies after what happened to Ser Estinien: now, _none_ are allowed unnecessary proximity to dragons' blood, regardless of any perceived sensitivity or resistance to draconic influence.  
  
Brigie is an inquisitor before she is a woman, and does not flinch in the presence of two near-naked men — _but even inquisitors can be seduced_ , Corentiaux observes blandly, when he catches her eyes lingering too long on his body as he stretches in his seat.  
  
"You should be proud of yourself, Ser Corentiaux," Brigie offers. "'Tis no small feat for a single knight to lay a named dragon low. The Holy See will be notified of your deeds this day."  
  
Corentiaux is a step away from saying _I shall look forward to receiving the Archbishop's commendations_ before he reminds himself that the inquisitor likely does not share Francel's love of sarcasm. "Thank you, Inquisitor," is what he says instead. He remembers to return the smile she gives him.  
  
After Brigie leaves, the room is very still.  
  
Water drips quietly from Francel's hair into the tub. He is the one to speak first. "You did not have to save me."  
  
Corentiaux feels strangely weary. "I know."  
  
"I did not want to be saved."  
  
"I know," Corentiaux says.  
  
And then — not because he wants to, but because it is somehow the only thing to do — Corentiaux rises from his seat. He walks to the edge of the tub; he kneels, knightly and deferential. "You don't have to think of me as something that belonged to him," he says, softly.  
  
Francel tenses indistinctly beneath the clouded water. "What were you to him?" he asks, flatly. "What were you, really? I want none of your lies. I want..."  
  
But Corentiaux knows better than to trust Francel to name the things he wants. "I am his adjutant," he says, before the young lord can finish.  
  
"You _were_ ," is Francel's response.  
  
Corentiaux does not waver. When he reaches into the water he finds his arms engulfed in unpleasant liquid heat, a heat that burns his very bones like the scalding light of the midsummer sun, but still he does not waver when he pulls Francel's hands out of the tub and holds them loosely in his own. "I am, and will always be, his adjutant."  
  
Francel tries to pull his fingers away, but the knight only holds tighter. It's uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable because Francel's fingers are slippery-wet and dripping with hot water and everything seeps into Corentiaux's skin, unbearably, disgustingly warm. He hates this. He's always hated this, this _warmth_ — he understands now, _the Colder_ , cold because all his warmth is feigned, cold because he hates the heat of a wyvern's fire the same way he hates the heat of another man's skin, because ice and snow have given him more hope than love ever will, he hates this, he hates Francel, but still, _but still_ —  
  
"A knight lives to serve," Corentiaux murmurs, quieter than he intends: the mantra of the dead and gone and dearly beloved.  
  
"A knight lives to serve," Francel echoes, after a pause, and only then does Corentiaux think to put his hands back into the water, and lay everything to rest.  



	2. Author's Notes

When I was in high school, one of my classmates was killed. It wasn't anything unusual — she died in a perfectly ordinary traffic accident — but, naturally, everyone grieved for her. I didn't. I didn't know her, and I'd never even had a class with her. Still, a good friend of mine seemed deeply upset over her death. He told me that he'd loved her. I let him grieve.

A year later, after everyone moved on, I was talking to a different friend — my partner in a playwriting class. We were rehearsing for our skit when he casually mentioned that he was going to see the dead girl's parents later that day. It was the anniversary of her death, he said, and he was going to pay his respects.

I was a little cold-hearted in those days — things like empathy did not come easily to me until I became an adult — and I was surprised by his intimacy with the girl's family. Somehow I mentioned (rather insensitively in retrospect) that I had a different friend who knew her. Another friend who loved her.

"Yeah?" my partner asked. He didn't seem particularly surprised. "There were a lot of guys like that. There was this whole Facebook group of guys that — that sort of worshiped her. They convinced themselves they were all in love with her, but only after she was dead.

"It was kind of creepy," he said. "Half of them didn't really know her."

Then he paused. And even then, in my junior year of high school, when I was the absolute worst person you could possibly trust with a secret, I understood that his next words were a confession.

"I was like that. I thought I loved her, too."

Hello, and thank you for reading Midsummer. Writing it consumed the better part of my creative energies for almost two years, and now that a year has passed since I finished it, I feel as though I've somehow closed a chapter of my life. I don't make that two-year completion time public knowledge because I am bragging, by the way. Honestly, I should have finished this ages ago, but the completion time of two years is proof that I cannot be trusted to keep promises, especially to myself.

It probably seems like the height of pretentiousness to attach this author's note as an additional chapter, considering that AO3 has an author's note function already built in. But I wanted my thoughts to be strictly optional reading, and the limited space of the author's note section on AO3 is not ideal for extended commentary... and so on and so forth, and basically, I felt that an additional chapter could not be avoided.

I mentioned this on my blog a long time ago, but I began writing this story in April 2015, well before Heavensward dropped. In its original drafts, Midsummer was conceived as a mystery-suspense in which Corentiaux (the ordinary but essentially level-headed “assistant”) helped Francel (the intelligent but morally and emotionally compromised “detective”) investigate the fall of the Steel Vigil. In the end, they would have discovered that the character we now know as Ser Chlodebaimt (then simply House Haillenarte’s third son and Francel’s brother) was in fact a Dravanian heretic, and was himself responsible for the ruin of his own watchtower.

This was plausible in the world before 3.0, but Haurchefant's death necessitated a different plot, and Midsummer is a very different story now. Grief, acceptance, mediocrity, powerlessness, fate, destiny, love, hatred, warmth, ice — it is social commentary; it is a culmination of thoughts and life philosophies I have developed over many years; it is a critique of the game and its fandom, born of equal parts love and spite.

Public reception of this piece was very warm — but perhaps I should say private reception, as people have contacted me about it only through direct messages and in whispered voices. I think people intuitively understand that it is as much a portrait of these characters as it is a portrait of myself.

One reader told me that I might attract more attention by including Haurchefant's name in the description, but I adamantly refuse to do this. I made the decision very early on to never use Haurchefant's name in Midsummer. There is a specific point that I am trying to make with that omission, and if it isn't understood, then I accept the futility of my choice.

Another reader said that he couldn't tell when the story takes place because of certain ambiguities in the text. I would like it to take place whenever you feel it most appropriate, but to clarify all confusion, the story takes place around the end of patch 3.2, after Camp Dragonhead has largely moved on from Haurchefant's death and Emmanellain begins to speak of taking over it — in other words, after the archbishop is slain, but before the conflict with Nidhogg-Estinien is entirely resolved.

I have no particular agenda as I write these notes. There are a thousand different things about the creation of this piece that I could tell you about. But since I have to pick just one topic, I'd like to take you through my investigations of Corentiaux's character.

When I first began writing Midsummer, I knew that Francel would be my real focus, but I needed a lens through which to view him — and Corentiaux was my only real choice. Before 3.0 — before Aymeric and Estinien and the members of the Heavens' Ward eclipsed him in popularity — Corentiaux was actually one of the game's more popular Elezen men, though admittedly only because of his attachment to Haurchefant.

If you don't know, at all, who Corentiaux is (and I did have some readers like that), he is the blond knight who stands by Haurchefant's desk in Camp Dragonhead. He gives the player a handful of quests, and an overview of his duties, if so desired, but you are never required to notice him. It is quite possible that some players have never spoken to him at all.

He appears briefly in the MSQ, during the cutscene from "When a Cold Wind Blows," where he is shown silently reporting to Haurchefant, but I expect more people will remember his reaction to Haurchefant's death. Corentiaux's generic NPC dialogue is normally as follows:

> Corentiaux: You are come to Camp Dragonhead. Is there something you require?  
>  Corentiaux: As you know, Camp Dragonhead is an Ishgardian fortress held by House Fortemps, with the blessing of His Eminence, the archbishop.  
>  Corentiaux: Its name is taken from a nearby rock formation, which you may have glimpsed as you approached.

But Haurchefant's death makes his dialogue a little more terse:

> Corentiaux: You are well, sir? Good. That is…good.  
>  Corentiaux: As you know, Camp Dragonhead is an Ishgardian fortress held by House Fortemps. Its name is taken from a nearby rock formation, which…which you may have… I’m sorry, but I just can’t.

This is all well and good, and points to a significant division between his private and public selves, but he actually caught my interest back in 2.0, when he gave the quests "Dead is Dead" and "Don't Light My Fire". Here, for instance, is the journal text for Dead is Dead:

> How many ways can a man die well? Corentiaux wishes to speak to you of this and more.

And his lines from that same quest:

> Corentiaux: I lost two good men to these wolves. Had they been knights, the hunting horns would have sounded ere their blood had rusted! I would see you avenge them, and the reward is a fair one. Bring back the hides and we shall both gain what we seek.  
>  Corentiaux: Honor is in how justly we treat others who serve the cause alongside us, in life and death. Out of honor flows all that makes a man of a boy, a woman of a girl. Surely when we meet Halone in the afterlife, 'tis honor She judges, not pride.

He is equally angry in the quest "Don't Light My Fire," where he says:

> Corentiaux: By Halone, it is good to have something go well!  
>  Corentiaux: Ah, forgive my outburst. It has been a difficult week...moon...some longer span of time. Like a siege though none exists...and man cannot live in a constant state of unhappy strain. The success you convey back to me means a great deal.

All this already helped me form an image of him as a man desperately trying to keep his perfect veneer together lest he bare the hatred barely hidden beneath — but the sheer bitterness of his levequests solidified my impression of him:

> **Spear of Heaven**  
>  My first captain always said that fortification is protection that kills for us. It has been many a year since she fell, still I remember. These logs will form the perimeter wall, planted deep with sharp ends enshrouded in the glare of mythril. May the wyrms' minions fly low, bank sharp and die screaming.  
>  _House Fortemps Knight, Corentiaux the Colder_
> 
> **Brother in Arms**  
>  House Fortemps owes the wyrms a debt of fire. A dragoon I loved well, the first among us, fell at the Stone Vigil. We buried him in armor; there was no separating him from it. This cannon we forge from steel and tears-it will bear his name so that he may fight alongside us again.  
>  _House Fortemps Knight, Corentiaux the Colder_

I suppose it is unfortunate that I did not capitalize upon Corentiaux at the height of his significance, but he nevertheless defines the narrative for himself. It is true that Corentiaux is a lens through which the reader can view Francel, in all his anguish and melancholy, but Corentiaux is, himself, not transparent. He is more like a piece of colored glass. Fail to account for his biases, and you miss the true image.

Corentiaux's characterization here was an attempt on my part to reconcile the discrepancies between his public and private selves. He is a man obsessed with what mask he wears at any given time, who maintains perfection to hide his flaws and his morbid preoccupation with death. Sometimes, he is exactly like me. Other times, we are nothing alike.

In the end, I tried to frame Corentiaux and Francel as essentially similar people thrust into different positions by the circumstances of their birth. The complexities of their relationship continue to fascinate me. I considered writing a sort of sequel to this piece, in which nothing much happens except that Francel and Corentiaux talk to each other, but I couldn't figure out what my excuse for writing it would be. I try not to write unless I have some sort of objective in mind — writing is a fruitless enough endeavor as it is.

Midsummer is finished, now, but it never really ended. I continue to explore similar themes in my private writing with friends. In most of our stories, Francel gets a happy ending. In this one, he gets an ending that is just good enough, and sometimes that is all you can ask for in life.

It has certainly been an experience writing this. Now that it's done, it seems to me a great exercise in futility. It is a story that asks the reader to think, but the nature of fanfiction is such that people rarely read to think. I'm not really this serious in my personal life, but I suddenly feel acutely aware of the pointlessness of language. If I were a better artist, I could express my thoughts in images, and I would never have to worry about being misinterpreted. If I were a better musician, I could express myself through sound, and transcend the boundaries of words. But I tied myself to this — this increasingly useless craft. And now I have to ask myself: what was the point of this? What was the point of any of this?

Sometimes, I don't want to share Midsummer with anyone at all. I want people to understand it, but I don't want anyone to understand it. It contains too much of myself, too much of my own anger, my own ideas of death and grieving. It is as much a portrait of myself as it is the story of these characters. But I'm finished. I do not think I could write another word.

I am grateful to all those who offered their feedback and encouraged this piece to its completion; to my roleplay partners, past and present; and to my dearest friends. For even on the coldest days, it will always be summer, somewhere deep within my heart.


End file.
